15 pc Karachites advocate suicide bombings??

Karachi, Aug 28: Have you ever heard of people advocating for suicide bombings? Well, here are two separate studies conducted by faculty and students at the Aga Khan University in Karachi that show startling revelations of 15 pc of people supporting suicide bombing, stating that Islam and other religions supported it.

The two studies looked into the attitudes toward suicide bombing among educated people in Karachi and in the tribal areas. Both found surprisingly divergent results, reported the Daily Times.

15 percent of participants in the Karachi-based study supported suicide bombing and said that Islam and other religions supported it.

According to the paper, the findings of the studies raised a heated debate among the participants of a concurrent session during the 12th National Health Sciences Research Symposium at the Aga Khan University on Wednesday. Some of whom with backgrounds in Psychiatry, felt that those who become suicide bombers almost 'invariably suffer from psychiatric disturbances'.

Prof Abdul Wahab Yousafzai, who conducted the study in the tribal areas of Pakistan, showed that those surveyed strongly believed that religion should influence political thinking (88 percent), that it is important for Muslims to live in an Islamic state (76 percent), but that suicide bombing is not legitimate for Muslims (80 percent) and that suicide bombing is not the result of Islamic fundamentalism (68 percent).

At the same time, 83 percent said they did not support suicide bombing.

While the study conducted in Karachi by students Faraz Kazim and others showed that 15 percent supported suicide bombing and 84 percent believed suicide bombing is the result of religious fundamentalism, while 55 percent believe that suicide bombers have some underlying psychiatric illness.

However, nearly 50 percent of all those surveyed in Karachi believed that suicide bombing was acceptable in Palestine, Kashmir and Lebanon.

At the same time, the study also showed that 82 percent believe that suicide bombers were religious fanatics, while approximately 60 percent felt that suicide bombers were relatively uneducated people, who were outcasts from society and who felt frustrated. Some 70 percent said that it is the poorest factions of society that produce suicide bombers.